Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

Belatedly getting around to trying to put my reactions to this week's new "Angel" episode into coherent form (I've had a mass of grading to do this week and got stomach flu over the last couple of days, just for good measure). I've now seen the episode "Shells" twice through, and here's a bit of what I think.


I. "A Play on Perspective" (or, 'Objects in Mirror may be Closer than they Appear')

I'm going to try to set aside, for the moment, certain qualms I have about the idea of anything in this world -- or out of it -- having the power to consume and destroy a soul that doesn't belong to it, that wasn't GIVEN to it in some sense (I don't have a Bible handy at the moment, or I'd look up the passage which says not to fear those who can kill the body, but rather fear those who can kill the soul [it's Matthew 10:38], because I THINK the context implies that you have to GIVE your soul into their power or make it vulnerable to them through some choices of your own -- and I'm not sure that Fred's decision to come to work at W&H is quite enough to put her soul on the Old Ones' buffet table).

Instead, let's look at all the shifts and twists in perspective in this episode, all the times when something you take to be one thing actually turns out to be another. The following conversation occurs as Spike has returned to his complaints about tiny airline bottles of whiskey on the return flight from England, likening the tiny bottle to a REAL drink that's just very far away.

Angel: What does that mean? Really?
Spike: It's...a play on perspective.
Angel: Gone. What does it mean that she's gone?
Spike: Well, in the world of men, a person dies, they stay that way.
Angel: Unless you're a vampire.
Spike: Or the ghost of one that saved the world.
Angel: Or Buffy. Death doesn't have to be the end. Not in our world. Rules can be broken. All you have to do is push hard enough.

On one level, at first hearing, I'm reading that as Joss Whedon's (though I know he didn't personally write this episode) explanation for why the apparent theology of the Buffyverse differs markedly from his own avowed atheistic beliefs: in the real, human world, death is the end, no exceptions, no happy endings; but in the world of the fantastic, you can play around with that, break otherwise immutable laws of physics and philosophy and entertain the possibility that there's ALWAYS a way to go on, a way to bend reality ever so slightly to one's will in the game of "What if . . . ?" That reading may or may not be valid.

But on another level, and on second viewing, knowing what's coming later in the episode, I'm seeing this dialogue as a warning that the breaking of rules and continuation of Fred will NOT go according to expectations. That this will be, in some sense, a "shell game" -- a variation on that old scam where you're supposed to find the pea under one of the three rapidly shifting walnut shells, but the pea is NEVER there when you've put your money on the line, because -- as often noted before -- "the house always wins."


II. "The Old Shell Game" (or, 'The Demon is Quicker Than the Eye')

Shortly after Spike and Angel return to W&H, Wes once again asserts, forcefully, that Fred is GONE, there IS no Fred anymore.

Wes: I watched it gut her from the inside out. Everything she was is gone. There is nothing left but a shell.
Angel: Then we'll figure out a way to fill it back up.
Spike: The thing only took over her body. It's the tip of the theological.
Angel: It's the soul that matters.
Spike: Trust us. We're kind of experts.
Gunn: What about her...if her organs have been liquified?
Spike: [raising his hand] Flash-fried in a pillar of fire saving the world. I got better.

Beyond all the Python-esque associations raised by the phrase "I got better!", I couldn't help but think -- second time through -- that drawing parallels between Fred's condition and Spike's recent history was a rather nifty way to signal in advance that things would NOT go according to plan or fit neatly into the categories Angel and Spike and everyone were trying to draw.

Several years before Spike's internal organs (along with every other part of him) were flash-fried while closing the Hellmouth and saving the world, he presented us with the fascinating conundrum of a soul-less vampire who was capable of love and loyalty and other human virtues, and who actually aspired to be more than the compassion-less, connection-less, conviction-less creature of evil that his job description had seemed to call for. Though William's soul was only supposed to be lost, rather than completely destroyed, when Dru made him into a demon, somehow something of the poet -- the man of feeling (if not talent)-- survived, burned into the very cell structure of the undead Spike.

And similarly, it seems, though there's nothing left to bring back (no toothpaste to be stuffed back into Fred's tube) because Fred's soul was "consumed by the fires of resurrection" (again, I'm temporarily tabling my extreme uneasiness over THAT particular bit of phrasing), yet something remains.

Illyria tells Wes that there ARE fragments of Fred in her, memories electrically channeled into Illyria's "function system" as Fred was dying and Illyria was being reborn. With no armies of doom to rise at her command and cleanse the earth of humanity, Illyria is stuck between worlds, as she reluctantly confesses to Wes.

Illyria: I have nowhere to go! My kingdom is long dead. Long dead. There's...so much I don't understand. I become overwhelmed. I'm unsure of my place.
Wesley: Your place is with the rest of your people, dead and turned to ash.
Illyria: Perhaps. But I exist here. I must learn to walk in this world. I'll need your help,...Wesley.

I'm trying not to flash back to Anna Sheridan in the Babylon 5 episode "Z'ha'dum" (telling John that HIS Anna, the woman he loved, is gone and can never come back, and that SHE is just what was made IN that Anna, but that given a chance she can love him just as well as the real Anna did -- if he'll just climb down off that balcony and be reasonable about the Shadows). But, setting aside that hint of deja vu, I AM sort of intrigued by the idea that Wes is being given the opportunity to make a new soul out of Fred's memories and Illyria's discomfort in this body that looks so much like Fred, but not.

Wesley: ...I'm probably the last man in the world to teach you what's right.
Illyria: But you will. If I abide, you will help me.
Wesley: Yes.
Illyria: Because I look like her.
Wesley: ...Yes.
Illyria: [contemplating her sarcophagus] We cling to what is gone. Is there anything in this life but grief?
Wesley: There's love. There's hope, for some. There's hope that you'll find something worthy, that your life will lead you to some joy. That, after everything, you can still be surprised.
Illyria: Is that enough? Is that enough to live on?

Answers to that question will have to be continued later, since the library is closing. More tomorrow.